An Egyptian court was right to convict a minibus driver shown in an Internet video being sodomized by police while in custody, but the police should also be punished, the man's lawyer said on Tuesday.Cairo driver Imad al-Kabir was convicted earlier this month of obstructing justice and assaulting a police officer after he tried to intervene in a dispute between police and a relative. The lawyer, Nasser Amin of the Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary, said he hoped the same judge would treat as equally serious the case of two police officers accused of abusing the man, when their trial starts in March. "I think the court will punish the police officers in this case," Amin said, saying he was hoping they would be handed a multiple-year jail term. ... http://abcnews.go.com

Panamanian prosecutors have begun an investigation into Health Minister Camilo Alleyne and other officials over the deaths of at least 51 people poisoned by adulterated medicine made in government laboratories.Families of the dead filed a criminal suit against Alleyne and the heads of the country's social security fund and called for their resignations. "Us taking up the suit does not mean we have identified any specific crime," Kenia Porcell of the attorney-general's office said on Tuesday. She added the process was in its early stages and did not merit Alleyne's resignation. In October, Panama declared a national epidemic alert after people began dying from an unexplained ailment that affected the renal system and caused neurological damage. ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2799592

Israeli army commander Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, under fire for failures in last summer’s war in Lebanon, has resigned, the Defense Ministry said early Wednesday. Halutz has been under pressure to step down ever since the end of the 34-day war, which failed in its goals of defeating the anti-Israel militant group Hezbollah and bringing home two captured soldiers. Israeli launched a full-scale attack on Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas after they seized the two men and killed three other soldiers in a cross-border raid July 12. Army Radio reported that Halutz sent his letter of resignation to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, saying that he was taking responsibility for the outcome of the war. “For me the concept of responsibility is everything,” Halutz wrote, according to Army Radio. ...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16658726/

Russian authorities ordered security forces on high alert Tuesday after receiving information from foreign officials pointing to the threat of a terrorist attack on public transportation, officials said. Authorities are checking information about the potential threat, they said. A federal anti-terrorism headquarters received information "from foreign partners ... about the possibility a subversive terrorist act could be committed on ground transport and in the metro," according to a statement confirmed by a Federal Security Service official who said he was not authorized to give his name for publication. Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev, who also heads the anti-terror center, ordered anti-terror forces on high alert and called for stepped-up measures to prevent any attack, the statement said. It offered no details on the nature of the threat or the measures to be taken. ...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/16/terror/main2363558.shtml?source=RSSattr=World_2363558

The biggest US political court case for decades opened in Washington today when Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to vice-president Dick Cheney, went on trial for perjury. The trial in the district court, expected to last about six weeks, will focus on whether he lied over a CIA leak scandal. But it will examine more broadly the events that led the Bush administration to invade Iraq in 2003. In a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nine to one, the opening day was dominated by jury selection, with Mr Libby’s lawyers trying to find jurors sympathetic to the Bush administration and the decision to go to war. Witnesses will include Mr Cheney, making it the first time a vice-president has testified in a criminal court. Judge Reggie Walton asked a panel of about 60 potential jurors: “Do any of you have feelings or opinions about the Bush administration or any of its policies or actions, whether positive or negative, ...http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1991787,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12

Called in from the fields of his forced labor camp without explanation, Roth Chheng had every reason to assume that the Khmer Rouge was going to execute him as indiscriminately as it had slaughtered his compatriots for walking with a limp, speaking out of turn, or stealing a potato. But that 1977 day, when Roth Chheng entered the empty dining hall, an official from the ultra-Maoist regime ordered the bewildered 27-year-old to hold hands with a young woman he'd never laid eyes on before: They were married, then and there, in a five-minute ceremony. Dressed in his soiled work clothes, Roth Chheng numbly assented — yes, they would live together and love each other forever; yes, they would be eternally faithful to the regime — barely registering the broad-faced 25-year-old woman holding his hand. The slightest sign of insubordination might lead to torture or worse — certain death if he'd refused. ...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/16/world/main2361897.shtml?source=RSSattr=World_2361897